As TC President Susan Fuhrman described in a letter read aloud by Scott Fahey, Secretary of the College, Boultbee began working in the Office of International Services in 1989 when she came to TC as a doctoral student (she would write her dissertation on how to improve orientation for international students) and never left. During her tenure the Office expanded its role to serve faculty and visiting scholars from other countries as well as students, with Boultbee also hosting and conducting workshops with visiting faculty delegations from Japan, Russia and other nations.

Fuhrman praised Boultbee for a long list of accomplishments that ranged from deft handling of the complex new compliance demands for homeland security that all universities faced after 9/11 to the scavenger hunts she instituted as part of orientation day for international students—a game that forced the players to learn how to navigate TC’s sometimes bewilderingly decentralized landscape. But Boultbee’s greatest achievement, Fuhrman said, was making the College feel like home for generations of international visitors:

“For our international students, you truly have been—to borrow a line from TC’s recruiting video—the face of Teachers College.”

Fuhrman in the Policy Spotlight

November was a busy month for TC President Susan Fuhrman on the national education policy front, as two national organizations with which she is closely affiliated released major research-driven policy findings.

On November 18, the National Academy of Education (NAEd) presented recommendations for education reform to advisors to President-elect Barack Obama and Congress. The recommendations were distilled from a collection of “white papers” commissioned by NAEd that will be released later in 2009. Fuhrman, who moderated a panel on education accountability, assessment and standards, is NAEd President-elect and will become President in fall 2009. Other panels at the event addressed teacher quality, time for learning, math and science education, reading and literacy education, and equity and excellence in American education.

On the same day, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), the federally funded organization that Fuhrman founded in the 1980s and continues to direct, released case studies of the experiences of five urban school districts, one state and three education entrepreneur organizations that offer new insights into the effective recruitment, development and retention of top-quality teachers. The urban districts studied by the project—known as the Strategic Management of Human Capital—were Boston, Chicago, Fairfax County (Virginia), Long Beach (California) and New York City. The state studied was Minnesota, and the organizations were Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, and The New Teacher Project.

Visit the Teachers College Web site to learn more about the NAEd white paper initiative (www.tc.edu/news/article.htm?id=6759) and the CPRE case studies (www.tc.edu/news/article.htm?id=6758).

Gene R. Carter and Geoffrey J. Colvin Join Trustee Board

Teachers College has added two new members to its Board of Trustees. They are:

Gene R. Carter, CEO and Executive Director of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), an international, nonprofit, non-governmental professional association with more than 175,000 members in 135 countries and more than 60 affiliates. Prior to joining ASCD, Carter served for nine years as the Superintendent of Schools in Norfolk, Virginia, where he succeeded in reducing the dropout rate, built a partnership program with the private sector, implemented a district wide school improvement program, established an early education center for three-year-olds and their parents, and implemented a regional scholarship foundation for public school students. Carter earned a doctorate in instructional and curricular practice from Teachers College in 1973 and received the College’s Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1991.

Geoffrey J. Colvin, a partner with CEW Partners, a family investment firm with interests in publicly traded securities, private partnerships and companies, and real estate. Colvin, who already serves on the TC Board’s Investment Committee, holds undergraduate, law and business degrees from Columbia University and is President of the Columbia College Alumni Association. He also serves on the Board of Overseers of the International Rescue Committee and the Board of Directors of the American Joint Distribution Committee.

Henry Levin, TC’s William H. Kilpatrick Professor of Economics of Education and Director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, received one of the highest honors conferred by a leading Chinese institution of higher education when he was appointed Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal University in October.

Levin was recognized for his enduring contributions to teaching, research and service in education.  Levin has been active in China, where he has studied projects through which migrants, who leave their rural homes to do assembly work in the nation’s eastern and southern cities, receive educational and other services previously unavailable to them. He has also worked on the design of community colleges in China.

Levin, who was honored on October 14, is the second TC faculty member to receive the designation. Mun Tsang, Professor of Economics and Education and Director of TC’s Center for Chinese Education, was appointed Honorary Professor at Beijing Normal in 2007.

Educational Entrepreneurs

Has educational reform produced an environment more conducive to educational entrepreneurship? For Frederick Hess (pictured above), Director of Educational Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and Larry Berger, co-founder and CEO of Wireless Generation, the answer is—well, not so much. Both men joined TC President Susan Fuhrman for a discussion on the future of educational entrepreneurship on November 5 in Milbank Chapel. Hess recently edited The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship, for which Berger wrote a chapter on the many barriers startups face in entering the educational marketplace.

Green Tips for the Holidays

UNPLUG!

Please remember to turn off and unplug your computers and other electronics before leaving for the upcoming break. Machines like computers, copiers, printers, microwaves and anything you plug into the wall consume electricity just by being plugged in—even if they are turned off!

LIGHTEN UP with LED lights!

Switch to this heavenly little bit of technology to light things up. LED bulbs use 90 percent less electricity than traditional holiday bulbs. Burning 10 strands of lights with 100 lights per strand, 8 hours per day for a month costs an average of $175 for incandescent bulbs vs. about $1 for LED minibulbs. Incandescent lights give off as much as 90 percent of the energy they consume as heat, so they’re more likely to cause fires. LEDs are touch-ably cool, and with their 20-year lifetimes, you don’t have to replace LED light strings as often as conventional ones.

DRINK LOCAL OR TAP

Drinking locally grown wine conserves fuel and cuts CO2. If 10,000 New Yorkers switch up two bottles of Napa Valley Chard with two bottles of Long Island Cab, it’ll have the same CO2–reducing effect as taking nine cars off the road for a year! If you live in the City, try these local biodynamic and organic wines that work with nature and skip the chemicals: Shinn Estate Vineyards, Silver Thread Vineyard or Long Island’s North Fork and Bridge Vineyards. Mild allergies to sulfites in conventional wine can cause pain, so go organic when you can. And drink a glass of water for every alcoholic drink you knock back!

The new year will bring renewed life for used Brita® pitcher filters, which will be collected and recycled into items such as toothbrushes, cups and cutting boards.

AVOID DISPOSABLES

When the Holiday dinner is over, recover from your food coma and store leftovers in healthy containers. Disposable storage materials are piling up in landfills (Disposable plastic baggies can take 1,000 years to decompose!) and toxins in plastic are no fiesta, so reduce your daily polymer intake by using safer storers. Some plastics, such as PVC (look for #3 inside the recycle symbol on the container) and polystyrene (#6), contain hormone disruptors and other chemicals that can leach into food. Doctors recommend that you don’t microwave plastic; ceramic and glass go from fridge to microwave and back again without leaching toxins (and don’t warp or stain like plastic).

 Books and FOOD

Through January 16, TC community members can drop off books for readers of all ages (including textbooks, children’s books, fiction, non-fiction and more) in Whittier Hall Lobby, Bancroft Lobby, New Residence Hall Lobby, the President’s Office, the Gottesman Libraries, Kappa Delta Pi and The Office of Student Activities and Programs. The effort will culminate on Wednesday, February 4, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., with a TC Community Bookshelf Exchange in TC’s Grace Dodge Dining Hall.

The Bookshelf Project is sponsored by Kappa Delta Pi International Education Honor Society, TC Management Network, Culinart, and the Offices of Student Activities and Programs, and Community and Diversity.

People can also give to the City Harvest Holiday Food Drive at TC. All non-perishable foods will be accepted through December 22. The most needed food items include canned fruits, vegetables and beans, and rice and pastas.

The drop-off location is on the first floor of Zankel Hall near the security desk. The food drive is sponsored by TC’s Department of Health and Behavior Studies,  Student Senate, the Rita Gold Early Childhood Center, and the Offices of the Provost and Dean, Diversity and Community, and  of Residential Services. v

Published Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2009